


How much the present moment means

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fever, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, Romance, Sick Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-20
Updated: 2018-01-20
Packaged: 2019-03-07 01:14:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13423599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: She was revealed to him in ways he'd never imagined.





	How much the present moment means

“Do you know how worried your aunt has been?” Jed asked, trying to keep any suggestion of accusation from his voice and failing, he knew that. He heard it and he saw it in her face, the way she let her lashes drop and cover those dark eyes that had not regained their brilliance. In the restlessness of her hands on the coverlet’s edge.

“I knew. And I didn’t know, it’s been such…confusion since I left Alexandria,” she said in a low tone. He had hurt her because he had spoken without thinking and now he was hurt, when she had chosen her words so carefully. _Since I left_ , she said, when it was truly that he had let her go, aware that she was delirious, her temperature dangerously high and climbing, her slender hand trembling in his. And he had let her go. Without a word of his own, only borrowed poetry to console her, if she could even recall it when she woke, alone.

“Your fever—it wasn’t so high at Mansion House. Not since that first day. But here,” he replied, not saying what he shouldn’t. He wouldn’t risk hurting her again.

“D’you know what I thought, when it broke, the fever?” she said. She didn’t say which time she meant; her aunt had told him how many times she had been on the brink, so hot they hardly knew how she survived, how many prayers had been offered and expected to go unanswered. Mary was looking straight at him now and he saw how she trusted him. It made something rise within him, something encompassing and warm, and he only nodded to tell her to go on.

“I didn’t know I could be so vain, Jedediah. I thought, I’m so glad they haven’t cut off my hair. If you came back, I didn’t want you to see me that way,” she said. He’d wondered at it a little, that all those beautiful dark curls were loose and not plaited, not shorn to save her the miserable heat and tangle, and then not let himself get lost in the imagining; instead he’d set himself to treating her, using every talent he possessed and making any promise to the Lord he’d forced himself to believe in. To hear Mary speak of it startled him so he spoke quickly.

“You’re not vain, Mary. You’re the least vain woman I’ve ever met,” he said.

“That only means you have a wide acquaintance of women overly concerned with their appearance, doesn’t it?” she challenged, a flicker of that old bright, quick, charming wit he’d fallen in love with almost despite himself. It tired her though, to think it and say it, and he saw what it took from her. 

“It doesn’t make you vain, to think it. And while I would have done anything to make you comfortable, anything at all to make you well, I can’t regret your aunt didn’t think to cut your hair,” he said, reaching to stroke her hand where it lay on the quilt. How delicately made she was and how the strength of her soul animated her! He wished, suddenly, passionately, that he could hold her in his arms as she fell asleep, to feel as her soul retreated, to be allowed that intimacy, far greater than any sexual communion. That he might simply hold her as she slept, her face showing how she dreamt, whatever might be the joy and agony of her mind held in the trap of dreams.

“If you came, I didn’t want to be different. I didn’t want to be altered,” she said. “To be ugly,” she whispered. He saw her face a thousand times, all subtly different, always the same. The loveliest woman he’d ever known. 

“Mary!” he cried before he could stop himself, as he couldn’t stop the tears that were in his eyes at what she invoked: the image of her with her hair chopped off, still beautiful, but sick, sick unto death, burning up and fearing he would never come. Or that he would come, finally, too late, and find her wanting.

“Molly,” he said, lowering his voice and softening it, stretching a hand to touch her hair, her drawn cheek. “Molly, you darling, beautiful fool, you could never—you could never be anything to me but the sweetest, loveliest girl and I should always come. I should have come sooner, I should’ve listened to Samuel sooner, or never let you go, but I would never let you go. Never.”

If she had been well, he might have let his hand drift to her shoulder, draw her closer for an embrace. He might have kissed her mouth, parted her lips and tasted her, caressing her so intently and so tenderly that she would pull him closer, arch into him so he felt her breasts against him, every breath she took bringing them even nearer. She was ill and death was held at bay but with a great effort. She needed to be soothed; the rest could wait.

“You needn’t worry about anything now, my Molly. **My** Molly. I shan’t go anywhere and you shan’t change, not unless you want to,” he said, almost crooning it. “Unless you would be more comfortable with your hair plaited. All I want is for you to feel better. To be well.”

“That’s not all I want,” she interrupted and then, glory be to God, she blushed. A pretty rose suffused her cheeks, her forehead and even the tip of her nose; she bit her pale lip and he saw it redden as it once had with his kiss.

“Then you’ll get it. Whatever your heart desires,” he said, hoping she could bear his entire sincerity and commitment, his best attempt at restraint.

“Mmm. I think that will suit me,” she said, fluttering her lashes as well as Lisette ever had. Better, for she lacked rouge and jewels and expertly cut silk flounces; all she had was the light in her dark eyes and the shadow from the open neck of her nightdress. And the likeness to the white roses in a glass on her bedside table. She sounded like her old self and this new one, this new Molly he was becoming acquainted with, whom he loved just as well as Nurse Mary and the Baroness. 

“Oh, Molly, I certainly hope so.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Emily Dickinson. Trope is the old, get-your-hair-cut-off-with-a-fever, Mercy Street style. And because I missed Mary and Jed.


End file.
